Oasis-What’s the Story Morning Glory?
I really like Definitely Maybe, too, and went back and forth on which one to put here. The first two Oasis albums are a great 1-2 punch for Brit-Pop, and a couple of my favorite 90s albums.
In the mid-90s I was living in a small apartment in Pasadena, and I’d finally started making a little money. I decided that it was time to actually learn to play guitar, and so I went to Guitar Center and bought a Epiphone PR-5 cutaway from Korea, which I found to be bright and very playable. Then I headed to a small guitar shop, and hooked up with a teacher, who’d show me some basic blues riffs and scales, which I still use to warm up, and then I’d play a tape of a song that I wanted to play. He’d break it down for me and then write up the tabs, which I would then go home and practice.
I actually got fairly competent, and I could play from sheet music and follow along with other players.
It was the early days of the internet, and America Online had guitar chord forums, and from that I pulled Wonderwall. It’s a simple chord progression, capo on the second fret starting with an Em7, which sounds fancy until you finger the rest of the progression. I was playing it once in a guitar store, and a pretty girl came up and asked what it was, which was really nice. It meant that I was playing something that sounded like a song!
There are many things that I would like to say to you,
but I don’t know how,
except maybe
are you gonna be the one that saves me
and after all,
you’re my Wonderwall
Is something that I would have liked to have written, and the woman I might have written it to then just passed away last week. The video was visually interesting, too, shot in black and white (except for a colored guitar) with Liam singing in a dentist chair placed inside a warehouse and Noel holding a megaphone, singing the chorus in Liam’s ear.
But there are other songs that I really liked, too. Hello starts the album with phased/fuzzed power chords over a bed of acoustic guitars, She’s Electric (from a family full of eccentrics) shows the fighting Gallagher brothers had a sense of humor, and the epic power-ballad Champaign Supernova (where were you while we were getting high?), closes out the album with a touch on melancholy.
Actually, as I listen to the album playing now, melancholy seems to run through many of the songs, like Don’t Look Back in Anger or Cast No Shadow.
Back in the 90s, in spite of the dense sound filling my apartment, I felt like I could play every song on the album. I still feel that way now, making the whole thing relatable.
In 2014, a three disc reissue of the album was released, with remastered sounds, b-sides that I had collected back in the day, and some live performances. I picked it up on eMusic (in the early 00s eMu was a good place to find odds and ends. Not so much anymore) for the price of one disc, and it’s very good.
